Fire and Knowledge

The New Age movement is simply the paganism of the Old Age. Such primitive and oppressive superstitions squelched human progress for millennia. Ironically, our advanced technology is resulting in a new primitivism, in which the gains of thousands of years of civilization are glibly rejected by a post-literate culture that closely resembles pre-literate ones. Even infanticide, a commonplace practice of pagan societies, has become socially acceptable in the form of abortion on demand. As Scripture warns, graven images can lead to paganism of the most horrific kind.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr. Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature (1990), pp. 22-3

Perhaps because of such a psychic burden, we have held on to the idea of progress but in a form that no eighteenth-century philosopher or early-nineteenth-century heir of the Enlightenment would have embraced—could possible have embraced: the idea that technological innovation is synonymous with moral, social, and psychic progress. It is as if the question of what makes us better is too heavy, too complex—even too absurd—for us to address. We have solved it by becoming reductionists; we will leave the matter to our machinery.

—Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century (1999), p. 41

In an earlier time, the idea that language is incapable of mapping reality would have been considered nonsense, if not a form of mental illness. In fact, it is a form of mental illness. Nonetheless, in our own time the idea has become an organizing principle of prestigious academic departments. You can get a Ph.D. in this sort of thing.

—Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century (1999), p. 8

Do you want to learn how not to be fooled by the all-too-common falsified image? Then read this article.

Goldberg’s Conservative Canon

A very helpful literary introduction to the canon of conservatism.

[HT: Justin]

Before the widespread use of the telephone, we had two means of keeping in touch with friends: stopping in for a visit or writing a letter. Each involved a significant investment of time and perhaps resources; in other words, maintaining friendships automatically caused us to sacrifice. And, by making those sacrifices, we showed our friends repeatedly how greatly we valued their friendship. Correspondence, in particular, not only preserved and nurtured a relationship but provided a record of it, a testament to its enduring character.

We invest far less in our friendships when we decide to call rather than write or meet in person. There is no permanence, nothing enduring, and no significant investment. At the same time, we demand much more of the friends we call. The telephone carries an air of immediacy: callers seem to think it our duty to drop whatever may be going on at the moment, whether it involves family, prayer, work, or a favorite hobby—or to offer an adequate excuse for not dropping everything—all because they have chosen that instant rather than some other to indulge their urge to punch a handful of digits on the control pad of a lightweight construction of silicon, copper, and plastic. The telephone caller intrudes unasked into the privacy of the home, and yet it is the one who is called who, if refusing to talk just then, is considered rude.

—Stephen L. Carter, Civility (1998), pp. 190-1

I’m glad someone else has noticed this. Does anyone else realize we spend thousands of dollars on computers, only for them to become obsolete in a year? And what about all that cheap furniture we buy that is made of cardboard with printed wood pasted to the outside?

Newer equals better. So say the world’s vendors of home electronics gear, and billions of us have believed them.

So we threw out our old vacuum-tube radios in the 1960s, and replaced them with transistor-based stereo sets. In the 1980s, we exchanged vinyl phonograph records for digital CD players. And today we’re replacing the traditional CDs with MP3 music recordings, buying filmless digital cameras and watching flat-panel TV sets instead of those bulky old picture tubes.

Yet most of these new gadgets don’t work any better than the gadgets they replaced. Often, they’re worse.

Free markets by themselves do not assure a well-ordered and free society; they can even undermine the very virtues that produced prosperity in the first place.

—Don Eberly